The digital gadgets such as social networks, applications and more have helped bring people to all kinds of information and helped communicate in various ways no matter the distance. However, bringing Women in Latin America closer to these technologies by talking about safe abortion and reproductive rights has been a challenge.

For this reason, safe2choose took part of the IDEA initiative, the first forum on Innovation for Reproductive Rights in Latin America. On November 2017, we embarked to Quito, Ecuador, where we met creative and innovative teams from all over the region. What united us was the use of the latest, most advanced technological gadgets for sexual and reproductive health.

According to the National Institute of Statistics, 244 women have been murdered in Ecuador since 2014.

Ecuadorean lawmakers have approved a bill better protecting women against domestic violence and femicide while guaranteeing free access to public healthcare for those suffering complications during an abortion, a procedure still banned in the Andean country.

The bill was unanimously approved November 25, on the evening of the International Day of Elimination of Violence Against Women, and dispatched to the government waiting for approval. However, Monica Aleman, a lawmaker from the center-left governing party, then made a request to modify the bill.

Abortion Escorts in Ecuador are Breaking the Silence
August 3, 2017
by Kimberley Brown

Abortions are illegal in Ecuador—punishable by prison sentence and highly stigmatized. But this hasn’t stopped women from seeking them out. Instead, they go through the procedure clandestinely, under dubious circumstances and often completely alone. One group is trying to change that.

Las Comadres—which loosely translates as The Godmothers, or “a very close friend”—is a feminist group fighting back against the nation’s restrictive abortion laws. Members accompany women through their abortion procedures and provide them with medical and legal information. Last weekend, they ran their first national workshop walking women through the process.

The two-day abortion accompaniment workshop focused on these legal, medical and psychological issues women may face, and how to be prepared for them.

by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion
July 28, 2017

Planned Parenthood Global, Amnesty International, Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida Mexico (GIRE) and Latin American Campaign against Unsafe Abortion (CLACAI) have joined efforts to raise awareness on forced motherhood and its impact on girls’ lives and futures across Latin America through the “Niñas, No Madres” (Girls, Not Mothers) regional campaign. The campaign calls for comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and safe, legal abortion services to end forced motherhood in girls in Latin America.

In the framework of the International Day of Action for Women’s Health, the campaign launched a call to women to share on social media what was their dream when they were girls, along with a childhood photo. The response was amazing: women from all over the region lit up social media with the hashtag #NiñasNoMadres. The timelines, full of cute pictures, brought attention to the toll that forced motherhood has taken on thousands of girls in the region. More than 40 national and international media outlets published pieces about the campaign, including Huffington Post, BuzzFeed and AJ+.

Latin America is the only region in the world where births among girls under 15 years old is on the rise. Forced motherhood in girls is an urgent public health and human rights problem.

In Guatemala, five girls under the age of 14 become pregnant every day. In Nicaragua, the number of pregnant girls aged 10-14 years old increased 47% from 2001 to 2009. In Ecuador, pregnancy among girls under the age of 15 has increased by 74% in the last decade. In Peru, every year, more than 1,100 births are to girls 12-13 years old.

Planned Parenthood Global has produced the report “Stolen Lives” in English and Spanish, which summarizes qualitative and quantitative research conducted in Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Peru to document the dire physical, mental, and social health consequences of forced pregnancy on girls living in these countries. This report was used as input for the Hemispheric Report on Sexual Violence and Child Pregnancy recently released by the Organization of American States’ Committee of Experts of the Follow-Up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI), which issues recommendations to States, including “ensuring that all pregnancies in girls are considered high risk and allowing legal termination of pregnancy.”

(One of the most important recommendations of the 117th Session of the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva, published 15 July 2016, concerned abortion and access to the means of contraception in Burkina Faso.)

(The Committee is concerned by the conditions required for accessing a legal abortion in cases of rape or incest, namely obtaining a judge's decision recognizing the offence within the legal limit of 10 weeks of pregnancy. The Committee notes with concern the use by pregnant women of unsafe abortion methods, which endanger their life and health because of legal obstacles, stigma and lack of information. It is recommended to the authorities of Burkina Faso to eliminate the obstacles to accessing legal abortion which encourage women to resort to unsafe abortions that put their lives and health at risk, and to remove the requirement of prior authorization of a court for abortions resulting from rape or incest.)... FULL STORY

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Ecuador:Concerns about the criminalisation of abortion in the new Organic Integrated Criminal Code

According to the non-governmental organizations who attended the Committee hearings and presented shadow reports, the State did not answer the experts’ questions on issues such as freedom of expression, human trafficking, and women’s rights, among others. This information must be sent, in writing, by the Ecuadorian State to the Committee.

(The Committee notes with concern that the new Organic Integrated Criminal Code criminalises voluntary termination of pregnancy, except when it is to "prevent a danger to the life or health of the pregnant woman and if this danger cannot be avoided by other means" and when the pregnancy has been a consequence of the rape "of a woman who suffers from mental disability", which would lead to many pregnant women to continue to seek unsafe abortion services that endanger their life and health.) FULL STORY

23. The Committee is concerned that, despite the legally available exceptions to the prohibition of abortion, safe abortion remains largely inaccessible due to the stigma associated to voluntary termination of pregnancy in the society and to its relatively high cost and the fact that it is not covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme. The Committee is concerned by the percentage of unsafe abortion-related maternal deaths (Arts.3, 6, 7 and 17). FULL STORY